Hodinkee
Gatherings: UBS House Of Craft Celebrates Independent Watchmaking With Laurent Ferrier
Laurent Ferrier's Head of Americas, Charles Marin, joined Hodinkee's Deputy Editor Tim Jeffreys for cocktails and a fireside chat in Palm Beach.
5,651 articles · 175 videos found · page 32 of 195
Hodinkee
Laurent Ferrier's Head of Americas, Charles Marin, joined Hodinkee's Deputy Editor Tim Jeffreys for cocktails and a fireside chat in Palm Beach.
Monochrome
A watch packed with history and pivotal in Oris’ destiny, the Big Crown Pointer Date saw the light in 1938. As the brand’s first dedicated pilot’s watch, the oversized crown was designed so pilots could operate the watch while wearing gloves in their unheated cockpits. With its legible Arabic numerals, graphic railway track, cathedral hands […]
SJX Watches
Sotheby’s upcoming auction in New York brings to light a pair of remarkable Patek Philippe pocket watches with double movements once owned by John Motley Morehead III (1870-1965), an American patron of the brand with exotic taste. Unknown even to Patek Philippe until now, the two watches each include a primary minute repeating base movement with a secondary movement under charismatic doré dials. Beyond their intrinsic rarity, the golden duo are significant from a historical perspective in offering a portal into early 20th-century American watch collecting, when interest began to shift from decorative to technical. The who A chemist who helped form Union Carbide, Morehead seems to have had a penchant for unusual, highly complicated watches. He also owned a triple complication with upside down “American” perpetual calendar, carillon minute repeater, and a double chronograph (as in, two separate chronographs) as well as a rattrapante but with only two seconds hands. The excellent research by Sotheby’s uncovered record of another of Morehead’s watches that was a carillon repeater with two sets of hands, like these watches, but powered by only one movement. Both double-movement watches going on the block at Sotheby’s have a primary movement with minute repeating on the back and a secondary simple movement on the front. The smaller of the two makes do with just a minute repeating base movement, while the larger watch also has a split-seconds chronograph with a minut...
Monochrome
Friendships matter in life, and what better way to celebrate the bond between two of watchmaking’s greatest individuals than with a tribute watch? Bringing together Abraham-Louis Breguet’s renowned tourbillon escapement and John Arnold’s beloved fusée-and-chain system, lovingly replaced with a constant force mechanism, the Constant Force Tourbillon 11 made a deep impression when launched earlier […]
Monochrome
Parmigiani Fleurier’s turnaround, orchestrated by CEO Guido Terreni, is remarkable because it has been achieved on the back of one collection: the Tonda PF. Introduced just four years ago, the Tonda PF family now accounts for 85% of the brand’s sales. Often described as the brand’s luxury sports watch with an integrated bracelet, the adjective […]
Video
Counting down to showtime. In two years, LA28 will begin, and the world will unite for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Following 1932 and 1984, this will be OMEGA’s third edition in Los Angeles as Official Timekee...
Time+Tide
Australian microbrand Hz Watches debuts its third model line, a dressy daily inspired by the famous 1972 photograph of the Earth.The post Ground control to Major Tom: Hz Watches pays tribute to our planet with the HZ.03 Blue Marble appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Teddy Baldassarre
Luxury Sport watches are probably one of the most popular categories out there with no shortage of excellent options from the most mainstream to the most niche independent watch brands. While names like the Rolex Submariner and Audemars Piguet Royal Oak are seen as the staple watches in this category to aspire to, we asked our editorial team here to share their personal picks in this admittedly crowded category. So without further ado, let's take a look at our favorite luxury sport watches. Glashütte Original SeaQ Panorama Date There are dive watches that you wear to go diving and there are dive watches that you wear - well, maybe afterward, to the country club where you go to talk about diving. The Glashütte Original SeaQ is a prime example of a watch that can actually fill both roles. While it was established relatively recently, in 1994, Germany’s Glashütte Original can trace its lineage as far back as 1845, which also happens to be the year that watchmaking essentially arrived as an industry in Germany. As I cover in much greater detail in this article, a full century of horological tradition, centered in the town of Glashütte in the state of Saxony, came to an end with Germany’s defeat in World War II. It was replaced by a new era in which a state-owned conglomerate of once-independent heritage watch manufacturers, the Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe or GUB, shifted focus from artisanal techniques and luxuriously decorative timepieces to mass-produced tool watch...
Monochrome
A slightly more discreet member of the Nomos family, the Metro is a more youthful, cosmopolitan, and modern take on the brand’s clean design language, compared to the deliberately austere Tangente and the classic Ludwig. Soft in shape, elegant with a twist, the Metro is a watch that deserves more attention. And, with the latest addition to the collection, […]
Monochrome
Launched in 2021, the Tonda PF collection fulfilled two needs with one deed. On the one hand, it celebrated Parmigiani Fleurier’s 25th anniversary and the illustrious career of master watchmaker and founder Michel Parmigiani; on the other, it marked a trial by fire for the new collection, overseen by the newly appointed CEO, Guido Terreni. […]
Monochrome
MeisterSinger’s new Kaenos DLC editions build directly on the debut model from earlier this year (integrated steel bracelet, sport-chic geometry) and give it a bolder, graphic look. Two limited references bring a black DLC case, a luminous golden-yellow sandwich dial, and the first leather-strap fitment for the Kaenos line. And while a combination of yellow […]
Video
The Seamaster Diver 300M Chronograph 007 First Light, worn by a young James Bond in the new action-adventure video game. See more.
Worn & Wound
Bulgari’s Octo Finissimo line has become synonymous with its technical prowess and record-breaking, ultra-thin designs (and for good reason). The collection has notched a whopping ten world records in just over a decade. However, we’ve also seen a softer side to the Octo through Bulgari’s more artistic interpretations of the iconic design. The most well-known are likely the sketch editions. As the name suggests, these models celebrate the original sketches of the design rendered by the brand’s Product Creation Executive Director, Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani. Yet, these more playful and aesthetic-focused editions have also been molded through collaborations with a wide array of co-creators from architects like Kazuyo Sejima and Tadao Ando to conductors and composers like Lorenzo Viotti. Among the Bulgari Octo mashups, the most striking have come from artists themselves. One of the earliest editions came back in 2015 with the Chinese artist Simon Ma. His collection of 13 piece unique watches explored the horse motif of the Chinese zodiac using traditional Chinese calligraphy techniques handpainted on the dial. Three years later, Bulgari enlisted the Japanese painter Hiroshi Senju to interpret a watch with his signature exploration of waterfalls. The resulting design employed mother of pearl on the dial to create a waterfall effect. Next, the Roman Maison took a more contemporary approach, tapping the Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima. This collaboration took a le...
SJX Watches
Components-specialist-turned-watch brand Fleury Manufacture created its own chronograph calibre inspired by the famous Lemania cal. 2310, which debuts in the FXR-4 Chronograph. Given Fleury’s origins as a supplier of parts, the calibre is built almost entirely by Fleury, and to a high standard. And the FXR-4 stands out for another reason: while independent watchmaking is rarely the value proposition it once was, the FXR-4 is priced well. The FM04 movement Initial Thoughts Self-developed chronographs are a risky proposition for high-end independents. Established brands offer fierce competition, and developing a new chronograph calibre is arguably a thankless task today since enthusiasts remain fixated on highly-decorated three handers that offer the watchmaker a greater return on a smaller investment. The FM04 movement inside scores well in terms of construction and finishing. The architecture is more refined than most other Lemania-esque chronographs, with the chronograph driving wheel integrated into the going train. And the finishing, a mix of machine and hand finishing, has enough of the latter to be considered high end; the black-polished clutch lever is especially outstanding. The design of the exterior doesn’t score quite as well, which is not surprising given Fleury’s background as a parts supplier. The date isn’t to my preference – and the date pusher looks strangely large – it will be a meaningful value-add to others. Vacheron Constantin’s Lemania-ba...
Hodinkee
Citizen's popular integrated-bracelet design gets a brand new movement.
Teddy Baldassarre
Watches with mechaquartz movements are a small but quietly growing niche within the industry, particularly in the ambitious, creative, and extremely budget-conscious world of small independent watchmaking. Watchmakers have discovered that these “hybrid” movements, which offer quartz-level accuracy along with a dose of mechanical appeal, can often provide the opportunity to make chronograph watches that entice watch enthusiasts while still maintaining the affordable price points that keep their brands competitive. But what is a mechaquartz movement, exactly, and what watch brands are currently offering the most interesting examples of this technology? Read on. What is a MechaQuartz Movement? In a nutshell, mechaquartz (which various brands and other sources have also spelled mecaquartz, meca-quartz, or mecha-quartz) refers to a chronograph movement that combines a battery-powered quartz crystal oscillator for the main timekeeping (i.e., the hours, minutes, and running seconds) with a mechanical module for the stopwatch functions. The latter element ensures that the chronograph seconds hand sweeps smoothly over the dial, as in a fully automatic watch, rather than in short jumps, as it would operate in a fully quartz one, and that the seconds hand will snap back instantly to zero at the end of a time measurement. A mecaquartz movement is often referred to as a hybrid movement, but it’s not a hybrid in the same technical sense as, say, Seiko’s Spring Drive calibers, ...
Teddy Baldassarre
It's no understatement to say that the Rolex Land-Dweller was the talk of Watches & Wonders 2025, which took place in Geneva a few months ago. A new Rolex collection with an integrated bracelet and a brand new movement? Well, we would expect no less. There is something fundamentally earth-shaking about massive shifts in the Rolex atmosphere. Mixed metaphors aside, just because we have seen Rolex develop and launch an entirely new collection quite recently (with the 1908, released just two years ago, in 2023), it doesn’t make it normal. Before that it was the Sky-Dweller, and years before that, there were variations on the Yacht-Master. The launch of the Land-Dweller proved to be one of those milestone moments. The Land-Dweller is the product of 18 new patents specific to this watch, as Rolex has developed an entirely new watch both inside and out. No, this is not a new complication, but it is a brand-new approach to timekeeping. It marks the first development of a new escapement system at this scale since the arrival of the Co-Axial escapement from Omega some twenty-five ago. In short this is big news. As you likely have seen by now, Teddy and I had the chance to see this watch up close and personal ahead of this year's Watches & Wonders a few months ago (you can find our full video hands-on review on YouTube now) and were also lucky enough to do it prior to a lot of the pre-release noise really reaching peak volume. That is to say, we were able to learn about the mech...
Video
I used to be a die hard Omega fan, and Longines did nothing for me. This was the status quo for decades and continued into the first 10 years of The Urban Gentry, but fast forward to 2026, when I not only don't have a...
Hodinkee
Bezel's report shows that fake or incorrect timepieces still proliferate across a variety of brands.
Time+Tide
In a celebration of Singapore's 60th anniversary of independence, home-grown brand Vario offers a colourful limited edition. The post Vario celebrates Singapore’s 60 years of Independence with the new, and delightfully red SG60 Merlion Trench Watch appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Worn & Wound
American watchmaking is having a moment. And if there’s any day that’s worth celebrating, it’s the Fourth of July. Happy birthday, America, hope you like Damaskeening! Just in the last month or so, we’ve seen a new release from J.N. Shapiro that could point to an entirely new and more accessible concept for the brand. Cornell Watch Co. revealed their new Lozier, with a case, dial, crown, and handset machined in the United States. Colorado Watch Company, the Fort Collins, CO based brand making cases and dials in-house with movements assembled in the United States, just shipped their first batches of new watches to customers after extensive prototyping. And Keaton Myrick, who makes watches completely by hand in vanishingly small runs in Oregon and somehow has flown under the worldwide watch community’s radar for years, just saw a fantastic result in a public sale via Phillips that went for just over the high estimate. And it’s not just that there’s a lot of activity. The watches mentioned above are all, actually, very very good, and show that American watchmakers and brands can succeed in multiple ways, using different models. Myrick and Shapiro operate at the very highest end of the spectrum, while Colorado Watch Company has the ethos of a microbrand (the project was funded via Kickstarter, just like their sister brand, Vortic). The Cornell model, though, is probably the most interesting to me. The majority of the watch is manufactured in the United States, bu...
SJX Watches
The Geneva sales have wrapped up, but the spring auction season continues in Hong Kong, where Phillips will offer a collection of unexpected and wonderful pocket watches made for the Chinese market in the 18th and 19th centuries. As Europeans became enamored with Chinese goods such as tea, silk, and porcelain, the Chinese were equally enraptured by European watches and clocks, often adorned with miniature enamel painting, pearls, gemstones, and hand engraving. Genevan enamelling, in particular, was world-leading and adorned some of the most elaborate timepieces of the 19th century. Proof of that can be found in the Patek Philippe Museum’s extensive collection of Chinese market watches and clocks. Today, Chinese market watches seem alien in their lavish and ornate decoration. Collectors’ tastes have become homogenized over time, particularly today, which makes historical Chinese market watches stand out as a world unto themselves, both in style and mechanics. A mini collection of such watches will be sold during the first session of Phillips’ The Hong Kong Watch Auction: XX at 6:30 pm on May 23, 2025. The extraordinary miniature enamelling found on a clockwatch by L. Vrard & Co. Lot 801 – Perfume Sprinkler Pistol by Moulinié & Bautte & Cie Geneva historically specialized in the manufacture of oddly shaped “fantasy watches” watches during the early 19th century. Common forms include fruits, musical instruments, animals, and flowers. Some of the more exotic fanta...
Fratello
Not too long ago, I expressed my frustration regarding watch brands with no history of releasing sports watches with an integrated bracelet. I wrote, amongst other things, “get a grip on your FOMO, embrace the JOMO, and do something else, please.” As I expected, I was not alone in my opinion. One of the comments […] Visit Hands-On: Taking The MeisterSinger Kaenos Open Date Out For A Spin to read the full article.
Video
These New Tudor and Grand Seiko watches look amazing, but who is their target audience?
Teddy Baldassarre
Before I get into my owner's review of the Seiko Baby Alpinist, I want to talk about field watches as a category. What makes a field watch? Is an explorers' watch the same as a field watch? Is a mountaineering watch? I wouldn’t necessarily call this, or rather these, age-old questions. Instead they illustrate an intellectual conundrum I’ve personally faced, being a fan of a certain format of watches. Many who know me will also be sure to know I have a certain proclivity toward Rolex watches. I once wrote some of a definite treatise on the Rolex Explorer Ref. 14270 - the now neo-vintage version of the watch that was born right at the start of the 1990s and which has since served as the template for all Explorers to come. Its 36mm size, legible dial, and overall no-nonsense field-watch format have made it one of the best watch designs of all time. But it’s also not really a field watch, is it? It was born as a marketing exercise in the wake of Sir Edmund Hilary’s summiting of Everest alongside Tenzig Norgay. It’s an explorers watch, one with alpine roots. The Seiko Baby Alpinist SPB155 Speaking of alpine, we cannot mention the word without invoking one of the most well-known attainable icons of the 1990s and 2000s: The Seiko Alpinist. But let’s go back even further, to the late 1950s and early ‘60s, when Seiko launched the small, 35mm Laurel Alpinist – a design that was revived by the brand in 2021. Fast-forward to 1995, when Seiko released a familiar forma...
Worn & Wound
Elliott O’Donavan’s go-to watch is his IWC Mark XVIII. His go-to camera is his Leica Q3. The DC-based photographer has taken portraits of seemingly everyone in town. Corporate executives, activists, politicians, journalists - his client list is a veritable who’s who of Washington, DC, with famous faces like CNN’s Jake Tapper and former Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth popping up on Elliott’s Instagram feed. And he sees a lot of overlap in his profession and his approach to collecting watches. “The way that I look at watches really describes the way that I photograph portraits. I don’t want my portraits to look dated. I don’t want them to look like something that was shot in the early aughts or in a certain decade. I want it to be like, ‘He could have taken that shot yesterday, or that could be a shot from 1960 or 1970,’” said Elliott in an interview with Worn & Wound. Elliott’s interest in watches traces back to the digital Casios his dad wore when Elliott was a child. “That was very much just for utility,” said Elliot. “But also to me, it had, like a certain element of style to it.” That interest in his father’s watch became an opportunity for father-son bonding, with Elliott recalling that his dad would take him out to buy inexpensive watches starting when he was about seven. “I would usually get the same watch that he had,” said Elliot. Over the years, his tastes evolved and his budget grew. Today, Elliott has a neovintag...
Time+Tide
A hand-wound calibre on full display, with plenty of hand-finishing... But does the Garrick S3 Deadbeat Seconds justify its price?The post The S3 Deadbeat Seconds becomes Garrick’s most expensive watch, but is it worth it? appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Time+Tide
Inspired by early 20th century wristwatches, with some impressively intricate design details.The post Furlan Marri celebrates four years with the Red Hunter, a limited release with an officer’s caseback appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Monochrome
Hamilton’s military credentials date back to World War I when the American brand supplied precision railroad watches to soldiers under the command of General Pershing. With a well-earned reputation for reliability and robustness, during World War II, Hamilton stopped civilian production to concentrate exclusively on providing the US Army with field watches. Now one of […]
Video
Today’s vlog is a total rollercoaster. We are stopping everything for the World Cup to drink great Sonoma wine, watch the intense Brazil vs. Morocco match, and talk my friend Tory into buying a beautiful blue vignet...
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